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NWL Baseball: Stingers take two, improve to 9-4 in NWL

WILLMAR —The Willmar Stingers’ had scored five or more runs in three of their four matchups before Sunday’s game against Thunder Bay, but the Stingers ramped up the attack to even greater heights, blowing out Thunder Bay 11-0 on Sunday at Bill Taunton Stadium.

As they did in an 8-2 win over Alexandria on Saturday, once the Stingers got started, they kept their foot on the pedal and improved to 9-4.

In the second inning, Casey Hughston, recently arrived from Alabama, led the inning off with a hit-by-pitch. He moved to third base on David Parrett’s first hit of the season in his first start of the year. After Parrett’s double down the left field line, Hughston scored on an infield single by Max Dutto. Brian Pruett drove in Parrett.

The Stingers scored two more runs in both the third and fourth innings to increase their lead to six, and the final blow came in a four-run fifth inning that put the Stingers up 10.

The 10 runs all came off Thunder Bay’s starter Tyler Lequire, who worked 5-1/3 innings in his second loss of the season. Lequire stayed into the sixth inning, but left with one out, after which the Border Cats gave up the sixth double of the night, this time to Hughstonn who eventually came around to score the final run of the game.

Matt Snyder got the win and Tyler Hanson and Garrett Anderson came on in relief to secure the shutout for the Stingers after Snyder went six innings and gave up only two hits while striking out eight batters. Snyder earned the win in his first start.

Nick Rivera also hit his first home run of the season in the win for the Stingers, a two-run blast in the third inning. Parrett was 3-for-5 and doubled twice.

A scheduled afternoon game at Bill Taunton Stadium was postponed because of poor field conditions.

In the second inning of the evening game, Stinger Reagan Fowler beat out an infield chopper and Max Ayoub also reached on a ball that didn’t reach the outfield grass. Blue Anchors starter Zach Muckenhirn walked Sam Hall to load the bases, and Troy Kuhn and Max Dutto hit back-to-back sacrifice flies to put Willmar up 2-0.

Willmar sent 10 men to the plate in the fifth inning and scored five runs to put the game out of reach.

Stingers starter Austin Klein struck out seven hitters in seven innings to up his record to 2-0. Dakota Belter relieved Klein, working the in the final two innings.